The present invention relates to a loading and unloading apparatus as well as a loading and unloading system comprising an apparatus as will be described below.
Although the inventive apparatus and loading and unloading system described in the present application may be utilised in a number of situations, the invention is especially advantageous for use in places where it is difficult to gain access or use other means for handling goods such as for example loading bays in aircrafts, boats, trains or other vehicles. That is to say that the invention is particularly advantageous for use in theses situations, but the inventive concept should not be limited as the invention may be used advantageously in other connections as well.
Within this application, loading and unloading of aircraft bays will be used as a descriptive example but again the invention is not limited for this use and does comprise a number of advantageous features which are applicable to a variety of environments.
Handling of goods, parcels, luggage and the like, hereafter referred to as items, can be a very demanding task for a number of reasons, depending especially on the situation at hand. Personnel loading or unloading such items often have to lift or in other ways manually handle the items, for example onto a conveyor, or carry the items to the conveyor in order for the conveyor to be able to transport the items into or out of storage. In storage facilities, such as warehouses, trucks and containers, although the work may be heavy, the position of the people carrying out the task may be relatively comfortable and, furthermore, wheeled vehicles such as fork lifts and the like may in some instances be used in order to carry and move the items about.
In other instances, especially in cargo holds of trains and in particular of air crafts, the space is extremely limited, whereby the personnel carrying out the transferral of items either from the conveying device into the tightly packaged cargo hold or vice versa often have to be in a rather uncomfortable situations lifting relatively heavy items such as luggage, packages and the like from a kneeling or severely bent-over position. This will eventually lead to injuries and is known to wear cargo personnel down. Furthermore introduction of legislation protecting workers against injuries caused by this type of work in a number of countries has escalated the demand for inventive solutions to this type of problems.
In order to alleviate these problems, a number of solutions have been proposed in the prior art. One of these solutions is the well-known flying carpet, which is installed at the bottom of the cargo hold such that, as an item of luggage or package is introduced into the cargo hold, the items are stacked to the appropriate height and the entire stack is slid on the flying carpet into its final position in the cargo hold. As cargo often is stacked in more layers, the personnel will still have to lift the item from the conveyor onto the stack on the flying carpet and push the stack into its final position in the hold. An additional disadvantage with the flying carpet is that, as it is permanently mounted inside the air craft, the extra weight and space taken up by the flying carpet will be a relatively costly installation for the air craft carrier in the long run.
Additionally, although the flying carpet might be helpful in transporting the items from the opening of the cargo bay to the position where the items will be stacked during transport, it still leaves some manual handling in that the items must be lifted from the conveyor belt into their final position in the stack or in the cargo hull as such.